I cook dinner for my extended family every year right before Christmas, and while I’ve made fancy four-course feasts and expensive roasts, this meal is still everybody’s favorite. Unlike the tomato-heavy bolognese sauces you might be used to, this traditional Italian version is made with … Read More
One of the best ways to teach our children to appreciate cultural diversity is through tasting and cooking foods from around the world. No matter where we are from or where we live now, we all have this in common: everyone eats. With so many … Read More
A few decades ago, slow cooker recipes relied on a slew of processed and/or canned ingredients that could be dumped in and abandoned. While those recipes admittedly required very little work, they made up for it in their, let’s say, “strange” flavor and texture … Read More
Miso is more than just soup stock. It is an umami-rich, salty fermented paste, traditionally made with soybeans and a grain koji, generally rice koji or barley koji (with the exception of an all-soybean miso). It is a quintessential Japanese seasoning that is also a … Read More
As a kid on hot days in Southern California, I always looked forward to enjoying a cool treat after a long day at school. Sometimes I had an ice-cold soda or a smoothie, but the treat I loved most was frozen yogurt. Plain yogurt has … Read More
My first time eating smoked mackerel is one of those Proustian memories: It was Father’s Day, and we were in Cornwall, England, for a family trip. The village we were staying in had one of those classic, large, white plastered buildings with a big smokestack, … Read More
The Grill Table Using a grill table is the most bare-bones way of smoking meat and the most reminiscent of the barabicu of the West Indies. This is still the preferred technique for smoking meats in most Asian and South American traditions. It is one … Read More
Fresh cheeses like mozzarella require little equipment and are excellent choices for beginning cheese makers, as they are quick, delicious, and easy to make — no fermenting or aging required. Many of these high-moisture cheeses are called bag cheeses because the curds are drained in … Read More
The first rule of foraging for edible plants is never, ever, eat anything you’re not 100 percent sure of. This applies whether you’re picking in the wild or in your own backyard. “Foraging in your own backyard!” you say. “I thought you had to wander … Read More
Salt preserves food, fats included. Chances are our ancestors first salted meats — and fats — just to preserve them, then they found that salting transformed the flavor of those foods, improving them. They created the art of charcuterie or salumi, along with hundreds of … Read More